Drance: Why Canucks’ demolition of the Oilers is exactly the start this team needed

What a relief.

After years of early-season disappointment, you couldn’t have asked for a better start from the Vancouver Canucks than the performance they put in on Wednesday night in their season opener at Rogers Arena. The scoreline was lopsided in the extreme, an 8-1 demolition of the Edmonton Oilers, and the storylines were feel-good and compelling.

Of course it was Conor Garland, who was barely applauded by the fans during the pregame introductions in the wake of the news that his agent has permission to seek a trade out of Vancouver, who opened the scoring. Garland caught a brilliantly threaded Elias Pettersson cross at full speed and beat Oilers netminder Jack Campbell in tight with a ludicrous backhand finish to get the Canucks’ onslaught started.

Then Brock Boeser, a frequent target of Canucks fan’s ire, went to work. He began with a perfect wrist shot to cap off an excellent forechecking sequence, followed it up with a goal off of a second rebound that cashed in a scoring opportunity Boeser had manufactured himself with a wonderful pass off of the rush, and finished with a wildly flukey back-heel kick that trickled past Campbell and had Vancouver’s first power-play unit howling with laughter. Boeser’s quick natural hat trick all but iced the game.

By the end of the night, Boeser had scored a fourth, and with the clock slowly winding down, the Canucks had demoralized the Oilers.

Edmonton closed up shop early in the third period. Frustrated, outworked and stymied, the Oilers lost all sense of discipline and composure. On consecutive shifts, Evander Kane and Leon Draisaitl chased superfluous hits on Pettersson, though ultimately Edmonton couldn’t even do that with consistent energy.

Edmonton’s late parade to the penalty box was so needless that all that was left for the single best hockey-playing human on the planet to do was gin up some weak motivational grist by complaining that Vancouver had put their first power-play unit on the ice up 6-1 in the third period.

Meanwhile, it was a snow day for the Canucks. And while the gaudy point totals (Pettersson, Boeser and J.T. Miller all concluded the evening with four points), the compelling storylines and the eye-popping blowout understandably captured the majority of the attention from a fan base desperate for a dash of meaningful hope, what mattered more and what’s more likely to stick than this team’s ability to trounce the league’s best was the fashion in which the result was produced.

Vancouver’s commanding victory over the Oilers wasn’t really about power play excellence, or finishing luck. The Canucks didn’t even need their goaltender to steal one. No, this was rather more impressive than that, even if the Oilers’ form was dreadful.

On Wednesday night the Canucks did something we’ve rarely seen this team do since they left the bubble: They won handily because of an accumulation of small, disciplined, hardworking contributions from just about everyone in the lineup.

It was Anthony Beauvillier skating through a pinching Darnell Nurse to clear the zone when the Oilers, with the game still within reach, appeared to be pushing.

It was Pius Suter, with a clever stick, deviously breaking up multiple Oilers attempts to string cross-seam passes through Vancouver’s penalty killers (passes that were all but automatic against this Canucks team last season).

It wasn’t just about Pettersson’s passing, it was about the heavy hit he threw on Cody Ceci. It was Filip Hronek sliding expertly to break up a Connor McDavid rush when he’d been on the ice for over 100 seconds and his teammates had absolutely nothing left in the tank. And newcomer Sam Lafferty beating a check out wide off of the rush and drawing a key penalty.

It was Thatcher Demko, so clearly ill that he was visibly battling to stay in the net between whistles, refusing to come out of the game. Vancouver’s starter finally relented and was pulled by Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet midway through the third period because, as Tocchet explicitly explained postgame, Demko had retched into his goalie mask.

And it was definitely about Miller, who admitted postgame that he’d had this game on his mind for a while, the ghost of last season’s opening night debacle — in which the Canucks took an early 3-0 lead against the Oilers, and promptly blew it — clearly weighing heavily on him.

In a hard match with McDavid on Wednesday night, Miller’s line with Phil Di Giuseppe and Boeser outscored the Art Ross and Hart Trophy favourite 3-0 at five-on-five and absolutely dominated play. You could genuinely and objectively argue that Miller and his linemates had more success in that matchup with McDavid on Wednesday night than just about anybody ever has since McDavid entered the league.

Of those 7 times, McDavid has only been outscored by 3 goals (or more) 5-on-5 in a H2H hard match twice.

Once by Brayden Schenn, Jaden Schwartz and Vladimir Tarasenko in Nov. of 2017 when he was 20-years-old.

And tonight by J.T. Miller, Phil Di Giuseppe and Brock Boeser. 2/2

— Thomas Drance (@ThomasDrance) October 12, 2023

For one night anyway, the Canucks looked like a team capable of rising to the occasion. Like a team capable of having “everything go right” for them over the balance of the season.

“I don’t think we made a statement,” said newly anointed captain Quinn Hughes postgame. “But I feel real confident in the way we know that we can play. We have a structure that can help us win and that’s the blueprint. Maybe it’s not an 8-1 win, but we can win like that 3-1, 2-1, 5-2 and we should expect to do so.”

It’s just two points and it’s just one game, but there are outcomes that matter more when they occur early in the season.

This team has been so regularly overmatched with astonishing frequency early on in three consecutive campaigns that winning their first game, defeating the Oilers at home, and doing so in such decisive fashion has additional significance in this hockey market.

This was a home opener, after all, that wasn’t really sold out. At cost, tickets were available on the day of the game, which is hard to fathom given the traditional passion for Canucks hockey in this market.

Clearly the Canucks have some work to do to convince even hardcore fans that there’s something solid and worthwhile to grasp here.

A result like Wednesday’s might be an indicator of the true talent level of this team and it might not be, it’s just one game. Regardless, however, an 8-1 win on opening night is the sort of statement win guaranteed to at least pique this city’s customary curiosity about the Canucks franchise.

And what starts with curiosity can quickly become genuine excitement, particularly if they can sustain anything approaching the level of commitment and gumption Canucks players showed on Wednesday.

“There was a little bit of ‘FU’ in our game after last year’s start,” Miller captioned of his side’s effort. That’s the thing. A little bit of ‘FU’ can go a long way, but an abundance of it can capture the imagination.

What a relief, then, that this Canucks team isn’t just off to a good start. Through 60 minutes of the 2023-24 season, they’re off to a nearly perfect one.

(Photo of J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser: Derek Cain / Getty Images)